Almost a month ago, I wrote about my hand-painted porcelain piece. If you're interested, you can read about it here. After posting that entry, I took my piece to a framing shop. I've visited the shop several times with some of my friends, but it was my first time asking them to frame one of my own works. The shop is famous for framing all the porcelain replicas at the Ōtsuka Museum of Art. I've visited the museum twice: once with my family and once with a friend. If you're curious, you can watch a video about it here. I knew that the shop owner is very skilled at framing porcelain panels because Noritake, one of the Japanese tableware companies also often ask their panels framing, so I was really looking forward to seeing the final result.

This morning, I received my piece. I was very excited as I opened the box.

This is my framed piece. When I brought it to the shop, I discussed with the owner how I wanted it to be framed, such as a frame color, mat design and the color, and more.

I'm very satisfied with the result. I think she did a great job, but I can't stop thinking about what I heard from her. She lost her husband after framing the museum replicas. Since then, she's been running the shop alone. She told me that she would close her shop when she felt she could no longer do a good job. She has a daughter who's been helping her, but her daughter's knowledge and skills aren't good enough for framing on her own. I felt sad because we'll lose such a talented craftswoman sooner or later. I'm not sure if I'll be able to find such a skillful shop in the future.

I really hope her daughter will learn the skills from her mother and master it, so these wonderful skills can be passed down to the next generation.

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